“Bullets 1.0” by Sylvia Baedorf Kassis (acrylic, ink, gesso, rust and found shell casings)
Detritus
You can tell me
that what happens PUUUupon the soil PUUUUUUUUUbeneath our feet
does not matter
that the violence – PUUUgunpowder PUUUbullets PUUUlandmines PUUUblood spilled PUUUand rot of bones and flesh
does not affect the terroir
that the terror
over centuries
on land – PUUUdisputed PUUUand stolen PUUUfought over PUUUconquered PUUUand lost
is not ad infinitum
buried in this graveyard PUUUUUUUUUUUUcalled home
You cannot tell me
that what happens PUUUupon the soil PUUUUUUUUUbeneath our feet
does not matter
that the battles – PUUUsweeping or contained PUUUas enemy or ally
are not eternally captured in the earth PUUUdust inhaled and ingested PUUUUUUUUUbut also embedded PUUUUUUUUUUUUin our collective consciousness
like a rusty compass
nestled in the palm of each newborn child PUUUUUUUUUUUUits arrow clearly pointing PUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUto the forever trenches PUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUof inheritance.
New Poetry by Pawel Grajnert: “Michigan”
PARTICLES THAT FLOAT / image by Amalie Flynn
Michigan
Before the salmon-full, PUthe alewife-less, PUtropic blue Mussel-filtered water,
Was a green lake PUT_CCCCCCof indigenous fish.
A fishing industry.
Before that logging.
After eradication.
Before that trading.
Before that, words of people comprehensible over and around us –
Before most of ours – PUthat’s the take,
PUTif you’re wondering –
Describing the bounty. The ease of it.
The rise and fall Of waves on an inland sea, One of the great Cycle-keepers.
Let the gunk go down its gullet Is one way back to the true Inheritance of all that violence.
The other is to let The moist, rising earth – PUthe great Kankakee – Absorb – more than once more The particles that float about, PUand entomb them In some future peat.
New Poetry by Mary Ann Dimand: “Earth Appreciation” and “Lusting, Stinting”
THIRSTED FOR SWEET / image by Amalie Flynn
EARTH APPRECIATION
Behold this clod, umami of mould and mineral, worked
by millipedes, slowly digested
to a richness by mycelium—and fruiting,
fruiting with an explosion of possibility.
If I could put a frame around the wind—
a thin one, black, a way to point out
wonder—then we could see the paths
of gnats and sparkling moths, amazement
of maple key and mated dragonflies, tiny
rainbows in fog and flake and droplet.
LUSTING, STINTING
How we thirsted for sweet
achieving, to have the world
gush warm reward. Or drip,
or trickle, even ooze—some
something to fulfill the easy augurings
that graceful makings yield
swift returns. They yield,
in fact, to power, and to time
that’s flowed by us while
we labored and we crafted worth.
And so we climbed to pierce
time’s trunk, so carapaced it seemed
indivertible, a steely force
to move unwilling worlds. The spile
that wounded that fierce power
drew life from every hand
it touched, spilled spirit
that sighed forth and wreathed
the ray of time. But we succeeded.
Drop by stiffening drop the instants
fell, encasing empires, globing
moments—each honeyed gall,
each bittered rapture. I don’t know—
the others may be suckling sweet. But here
in my eternity, I feel the sucking wound
that is my life, steaming into snow. How
I wanted. How I failed, in getting.
New Poetry from George Kramer: “Three Snapshots of Superman’s Mother,” “Google Earth”
ASTRONOMICAL DISTANCE OF LONGING / image by Amalie Flynn
Three Snapshots of Superman’s Mother
Budapest, Hungary. December 1944.
This stagnant end squats over its vile start Faster than a speeding bullet!
from the slag pile, the louse waste More powerful than a locomotive!
the fecal secretions of war Leaps tall buildings in a single bound!
the girl’s father was sought for It’s a bird, it’s a plane, its Superman!
the column of Jews being Truth, justice and the American Way.
marched to the river. This is a job for Superman.
It was then that God stole her belief but left her fraught wonder.
Fort Collins, Colorado. November 1963.
The vertical hold hop-skips, horses drawing hearses plod inside the droning box, fusing to the vitreous reflection of his mother’s tear-streaked face. Preschool Superman stews. No president calls Him to Dallas. He was not consulted on preempting His TV show for this dull parade. His caped powers, though mighty, are no match for the elegiac bagpipes or the morose Kennedys on this untuned Magnavox.
Alexandria, Virginia. April 2016.
Floating in my feeble galaxy of lost atoms, I peer at an old picture frame. Behind glass the girl’s silver halide half smile issues a cautious greeting across this astronomical distance of longing. I orbit that smile’s twilight glow — a planet where love has nowhere to go.
Google Earth
Somewhere Gerardus Mercator met on an equator the ragged hunter who first drew from warm pitch and raw whisk the rugged path she found to the grazing grounds.
Their compasses agreed: on friable parchment mapmakers must have their maniacal dragons, their flawed seas, and their ranges of rumpling blunders.
An old wall was woken by a flattened paper globe, a remnant copy etched by an ancient calligrapher with a cliff grip chiseling a copper plate.
It is easy to see what is lacking here: a map’s crinkle, or its volcanic dimples, green alpine frock, sweat of ocean. No chance for glass-headed pins, and lands not thick nor lean are pliably lying on a polarized screen.
Swipe past the displaced perspective and its warning of the asphalt assault, sharp canines snapping at the ribs of gated jungles, as the electric sky thunders down boundless data.
In this benign monitor light I read about the first arrow and its story of the bloody hand that held it and the slaughters that it stopped. We daily stride newly into changeless air on the journey to pixel from dot.
